battement

plural battements

1. balletA ballet move involving a beating action with an extended leg

   Ernst and Watson are superb dancers--extraordinarily agile and acrobatic, and their unison spins, battements, and body lines showed a split-second timing.

   1988 March 11, Dorothy Samachson, “Chicago Repertory Dance Ensemble”, in Chicago Reader

   1 more example

   […] he raised slowly his rounded arms, stretched them gracefully backward and forward, moved his feet with precision and lightness, took a few small steps, made some battements and pirouettes, and disappeared like a butterfly.

   1894, Arthur Machen, Memoirs of Casanova

2. obsoleteA thumping or beating sensation

   Secondly, though there is an audible vertigo, as is known by the battement, or undulations of sound in the ears, which many vertiginous people experience[…].

   1796, Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, Vol. I